Popular Culture and Mass Consumption: The Motorcycle as Cultural Commodity

John Alt

The concepts of popular culture and mass consumption (or mass culture) signify two perspectives on the origins and significance of popular leisure activities. Popular culture refers to the cultural process whereby people create or ascribe meaning to their activities and artifacts. As a process of ascribing meaning, popular culture is a n act of symbolic interpretation and understanding which is socially particular. Mass consumption refers to the social process whereby culture is “mass- mediated” as a n instrument of domination, influence or manipulation. The social effects of a mass-mediated activity or artifact, and not their cultural meaning, is the generic focus of this concept. In this paper an attempt is made to join these two perspectives, to indicate the interplay between the popular culture process of meaning ascription and the mass consumption process of social control. This is done through a n interpretation of the motorcycle as a cultural commodity.’ From this case study, more general statements will be raised on the sociology of consumerism.

The Conjunction of Popular Culture and Mass Consumption In the modern period, the cultural significance of popular leisure is the

search for new experiences and meanings, for autonomy and self development, for relating in new ways to society, and for commitment and community.2 Above all, popular culture is a search for new meanings and understandings and is thus a cultural phenomenon on the frontiers of experience yet complete. Neither rooted in traditional social relations nor embodied in any “post-industrial’’ utopia, popular culture is integrally tied to mass consumption, to the changing fads and fashions of the culture industry.3

The culture industry now commands a wide range of leisure experience. In addition to the mass media, it includes the spectacular increase in mass spectator sports, commercial amusement parks, and mass musical spectacles. Other new industries which are integral to the production of modern culture are those in fashion, music, food and drugs; those catering to the do-it-yourself domestic worker and the hobbyist; the outdoor recreation industry which supplies products for sports and recreation (camping, boating, tennis, motorcycling, highway touring); the travel and tourist industry (airlines, travel agencies, hotels, resorts) which cater to the experience of the tourist; and the education industry which shapes the form and content of the educational experience. Traditional industrial commodities, such as the automobile, television, record player and camera,

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130 J o u r n a l of Popular Cul ture are continually “upgraded” and redesigned to represent a new experience. Further, new industrial goods are constantly being recreated and mass- marketed in order to consumerize the on-going search for experience and ~ u l t u r e . ~

As a result of the conjunction of popular culture and mass consumption, it becomes more difficult to define culture in the traditional sociological sense of the rooting of life styles, values and world views in concrete social groups or social roles. Therefore, a useful concept for analyzing the source and significance of contemporary leisure is cultural commodities. Cultural commodities refer to the symbolic experience attainable through the consumption of industrial goods or commercial amusements which are marketed by distinct culture industries. Cultural commodities, as myriad complexes of symbolic representations, stand as a magnet and a beacon, drawing people into the attractions, meanings or potential sensory experience attainable through its models. Cultural commodities embody the symbolic representation of the modern search for meaning and experience, and are among the most powerful symbolic forces directing and defining the domain of modern culture. The constant reproduction of new life styles through consumerism eclipses as well as destroys the traditional sources of culture and consciousness. It is the sharing of common experiences rooted in cultural commodities that largely provide the basis for personal meaning, social communication and community.5

The Popular Culture of Motorcycling The motorcycle provides a rich illustration of the preceding

generalizations on the conjunction of popular culture and mass consumption. Like other commodities, the motorcycle is not merely (or even primarily) a utilitarian transportation vehicle. It is a cultural commodity which symbolizes various meanings and experiences. And it is these symbols, grounded in traditions of popular culture and manipulated by the motorcycle industry, which both help to explain the current mass popularity of the motorcycle and its cultural meaning. This section interprets this cultural meaning through the popular history and mass media representation of the motorcycle. The focus is on how various popular culture sources come to define the cultural character of a commodity.

Traditionally, the motorcycle in America from the 1920s to the ’60s was the bohemian sanctuary of drifters, nomads, outcasts and hipsters who created a counter-culture around a relatively culturally-undefined transportation machine.6 In the pre-World War I1 period, motorcyclists were largely “gypsies”-highly individualistic male loners who traveled from town to town in search of part-time work. They were the mechanized counterpart of the urban hobo. Early motorcycling was a distinct way of life for a small number of men whose nomadic style was related to the high unemployment of the depression era. Following World War 11, motorcycling attracted war veterans and other young men who were unable or unwilling to settle down to the new suburban and middle class-defined life styles. Clubs and other loosely-organized associations, misnomered “outlaw gangs,” grew in popularity, thus replacing the earlier image of the gypsy

Popular Cul ture a n d M a s s Consumption 131 with the deviant gang. Forming largely on the West Coast, where a lot of unattached veterans were discharged and where there were a lot of unemployed “Oakies” who came to California during the depression, the new cycle clubs created a popular image of rebellion, deviancy, and wild abandonment. As a creative and deviant counter-culture, motorcycling stood at the margins of respectable American culture, and the latter largely stood aghast and in horror of the black leather jacketed and booted cyclists.

The emerging cultural image of the motorcycle during the 1950s and early 60s was typecast for the American public in the movie The Wild One, which launched Marlon Brando on his charismatic career as a n idol for individualistic rebellion. This film, based loosely and inaccurately on actual events which transpired in Hollister, California, in 1947, portrayed a motorcycle gang’s invasion of a small town, climaxing with a fight involving another motorcycle gang and the townspeople. Brando was cast as an alienated and inarticulate youth, who, while finding a n identity and an outlet through his motorcycle, ends up as the loser for his deviancy. Notwithstanding this moral, a legend was created and it grew. It was picked up and lived by the infamous California Hell’s Angels and numerous other motorcycle gangs throughout the country, as well as by young men who consumed chopped Harley-Davidsons and Triumphs as expressions of a n emerging “hot-rod” culture. Motorcycles came to fit the frame of mind of a new and young generation and symbolized their search for a wild and reckless freedom and individuality. For alienated youth, outsiders, beats, and the like, the motorcycle personified their uninvolvement, their rebellion, and their passions. And from this the motorcycle assumed a mythical character; it appeared as if the motorcycle, not the individual, produced freedom, individuality, and rebellion.7

But as the nomadic gypsies of the 30s gave way to the hoods and gangs of the 509, so did the latter give way to new cultural images of motorcycling in the 60s. The essential cultural cast of the motorcycle remained the same- it was a n object of freedom and individuality-but the terms of its rebellious image changed. The motorcycle culture of the 50s, as in The Wild One and the Hell’s Angles, was an image of rebellious confrontation with the Establishment and with official authority.8 In the 60s, the motorcycle was cast as an object for escaping society, not confronting it. The motorcycle became a moment of the emerging youth counter-culture: as in the urban and rural communes of the hippies, the motorcycle was a means of escaping mainstream America and getting oneself together.

This individualistic and escapsit image crystallized and was defined for the American public in Easy Rider, a movie featuring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper as uninvolved and inarticulate (again) hipsters who sail across the country on expressively-styled Harleys in search of beautiful sunsets, good times, and a n inchoate Holy Grail.9 Easy Rider outlined the “in” things of the late 60s counter-culture: anomie, the easy rip-off, drugs, sex, immediate sensory gratifications, social retreat and escape, plus an undercurrent of violence. More important, Easy Rider communicated the message that a pastoral and arcadian experience could be derived from motorcycle touring. In the film, it was not important who Fonda and

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Hopper were as social individuals, where they were coming from or going to, or why; what was important was style, speed, and sensory pleasures in an environment free from pollution, social complexities, automobiles, billboards, and the like. Notwithstanding the violence at the end (both were killed by “redneck” farmers in the South), the film communicated no socio- political messages; it only represented images of how to attain spiritual freedom by consuming or being consumed by motorcycles, drugs, and pastoral scenery. What seduced the viewers of the film was not the dialogue (of which there was little), but the arcadian imagery of self-transcendence through hip commodities in an unspoiled land.

The older cyclists and movies created a cultural image that the motorcycle was an object with which to express individuality, freedom, and rebellion, whatever roots or forms the latter may have. The motorcycle’s cultural history is one of the symbolic mediations standing between the individual seeking a new experience and the empirical act of exchange. In contemporary times there are also other symbolic mediations representing the potential experience of the motorcycle for the indivdual in search of meaning and experience. Chief among these is the communications media which includes, in addition to films, television programs (“Bronson”), books, magazines, and visual advertisements.1° The following examines key themes in popular motorcycle books, a medium integral to the contemporary cultural production and meaning of the motorcycle, through authors’ accounts of the joys and adventures with their cylces.

One of the best descriptions of motorcycling is provided by Perry in the form of a poem:

What is this obsession with the motorcylce? It is the ultimate in control It is man challenging the elements, the wind, and even the rain and snow There is no other thrill like feeling the pulse of a well-tuned motorcycle between your legs your hands firmly in control of your handlebar grips, the smooth rhythm of the highway pulsing and vibrating beneath you To feel the mastery that you alone and only you can feel a t that moment. A slight twist of the throttle and you are off with an acceleration that belies the motorcycle’s size because it can outstrip any car The twist of the hips and the quick weave around a sharp S turn The tingle of leaning over with danger so close yet so remote Gritting the teeth and the urge to roll on the throttle to its fullest stop, to fly off into the sky right into the clouds and sun the feel of the saddle as it gives with every stretch of road, the sharp intake of a clean cold air that fills your blood with an exhilaration no other thing can Quivering, vibrating, the tautness, yet the relaxation of your muscles, but at the ready, quickening to speed faster and faster until you can sense yourself flying off into space

Popular Culture and M a s s Consumption 133 the smooth response, the quick braking the downshift as she responds to every touch even slowing down and braking can be a maneuver of great thrill looking at the countryside for the first time, you feel akin to nature once again Just as a little boy you used to walk these roads-the complete serenity you are not lonely, you and your machine You have a lot in common, but where does machine leave off and man begin?11

Indeed, where does man begin? For Perry the motorcycle transmits “control,” excitement, “danger,” trsnscendence, and a mythical sense of freedom which pervades the mood of the poem. And it is unclear to Perry as to whether it is man or machine which relates these experiental meanings. The symbiosis between motorcycle and rider is so complete that it appears that the former, not the latter, is the transmitter of cultural experience.

To Gutkind, one of the motorcycle’s most articulate spokesman, motorcylcing (particularly cross-country touring) provides “a sabbatical from civilization and the responsibilities of it” and through a cycle a person can “grasp, in his own terms, the meaning and motivation in his life.”12 It is against the background of the oppressive routines of American civilization that the motorcycle takes on the attributes of a dream-and freedom- machine. In Gutkind’s imagery:

We Americans, especially those in the city, lead a potentially deadly life. We are trapped by skyscrapers and rush-hour traffic; our exhaustion is lulled by the television, our bones and brains are often soothed in martinis and beer. No matter who we are or where we are, the responsibilities we have to our friends, families, and employers are often intolerable. But a motorcycle can change the conduct and quality of our lives because it is indeed a machine that can harness man’s spirit. On a motorcycle, riding the road, hugging the wind, man can discover the joy of solitude, the rebirth of independence, the satisfaction of self-respect.13

Resonating the experiences of millions of Americans, Gutkind makes it clear that many daily routines are not satisfying as a form of culture; they generate needs and aspirations for escape and personal affirmation; and it is the motorcycle-a product of this alienating civilization-which can provide the culture which civilization denies. Again, in Gutkind’s imagery:

The men ride on Sunday mornings along the coastal highway near the Tamalpais Valley in California not just because of the scenery. It is something more private, something having to do with the emotions, hardened by a tough week, that are released by the force of the wind; the feeling of freedom of two roaming wheels that lessen the frustration of city life and the problems bred by it.“

This imagery of escape, respite, transcendence, and spiritual rebirth through the motorcycle is a dominant one in the cultural meaning of the motorcycle. To Gutkind, the meaning of the motorcycle is that it provides

a time for quiet meditation, a way of being put in a position to see things with more perspective, with the clarity of lengthy consideration.. . . The most significant aspect of crosscountry cycling is the internal satisfaction.. . . Freedom to roam. And time. Time is whata man needs to find

134 Journal of Popular Culture himself, to regain respect for himself, and if nothing else, the motorcycle makes the time for that.. . . On their machines, motorcyclists are children reborn. The world is their playground.. . . The wilderness is a sandbox where castles of mud are clawed by wheels operated by men who suddenly forget their stations and their goals in life.. . . They come home grimy and exhausted, hanging their helmets sheepishly, little boys ashamed. Mounted on two wheels, they ride backwards over the bridge of time.15

Streano couches the matter in less spiritual terms; for him the significance of the motorcycle is that it puts one outdoors, induces self- dependence, and provides a medium with which to meet new people. For Streano, the motorcycle takes on an image as a political reconciliator, as a technical instrument for bringing people together for purposes of mutual understanding:

Sometimes when I’m having idealistic dreams I think of a motorcycle a s the cure for all the world’s ills, not just in the sense that it saves fuel and takes up very little space but because it is the perfect vehicle for taking people into often forgotten nooks and crannies of their land, for bringing people together and having them understand each other.16

The motorcycle is an example par excellence of the consumption process whereby the universal human longing for a better life becomes identified with the use of commodities. As Sagnier so accurately put it, on the motorcycle “everyone can forget himself, forget his lack-luster present. The motorcycle is a wonderful dream machine.”17 For Gutkind, motorcycling absolved his fears and gave him courage and a sense of “rugged individualism.” The fear of the unknown-of potential danger and adventure-was a stimulus which “electrified” the senses:

More than anything else, fear was the overwhelming reason I rode this motorcycle. Maybe this is not true for everybody, but right then, for me, I was convinced it was. Not just today in the snow, but any day, in any weather, fear turns men to two wheels. Fear of getting too old. Fear of losing attractiveness. Fear of people higher up. Fear of a world too complicated. Fear of a world never seen. Fear of the ghosts that haunt at night. Riding a motorcycle eases the fear for some men. For me, on that day in the snow, I was held together by the courage broughton by the awareness of the fear.IR

Gurkind states that these feelings have a

lot to do with the motorcycle and the process by which it makes you free. Isolated in a city, haunched over a typewriter, selling draperies, filling prescriptions, delivering milk, doing all the dead and dull things of the averagemanmaking the average wage, your maleidentity seems pale compared to the rugged virility of America’s early heroes. So you ride.. . . You get to thinking about how much you can do, how much punishment you can take, how well you survive under serious hardship. Rugged individualism is no longer a long lost slogan. Somehow on the road, it touches you and you are hooked by the image of it.. . . Once you’ve tasted freedom and the exhilaration of beating danger, something tugs your nerves taut for more.19

The motorcycle brings sensuous experiences (ecstasy, exhilaration, virility) and conceptual images (freedom, individualism) which are denied in everyday life, but which can be rediscovered and relived through a particular assemblage of metal, rubber, and plastic.

The motorcycle, originally conceived as a means of transportation, has

Popular Culture and M a s s Consumption 135 become an object of dreams and fantasies. It is represented as the embodiment of freedom and individuality; it is an object which transmits fear and adventure; it is a thing which makes us children again; it is an escape and a respite from civilization; and it is the medium through which individuals can achieve self-transcendence and rebirth. Contemporary Americans’ insecurities and troubles also find their outlet in the motorcycle. It is no coincidence that much advertising content and media themes stress the virility, the vitality, the strength, the self-confidence, and the individuality that one can achieve on a motorcycle.20 For those who have been dulled and dominated by instrumentalized occupations and mindless urban routines, the motorcycle provides a modem odyssey, a means of shoring up one self in the face of it all, and an object for transforming one’s identitity. It is a tranquilizer, an equalizer, and more. It is a machine that can be used to express innumerable cultural emotions and impulses.

A concrete illustration of all this is provided by Muriel Gunn in her brief account of how she rediscoverd her identity through the motorcycle.21 She recounts how she had spent the last 15 years as a bored and harried housewife and child caretaker with the routines of her life as predictable as the seasons. After her husband had purchased a motorcycle (never to be seen on the weekends anymore, thus leaving her with the full burdens of the household), she decided to also get a cycle. Through her motorcycle-on touring trips with her husband-she discovered a new individuality and new confidence in herself. After a year she started riding with other women cyclists and her husband stayed at home with the kids. Shedding herself of her traditional roles, she describes her new-found identity in these terms:

Too often, housewives feel that they’re merely extensions of their husbands and children. For me, the trip without Dave and the kids was a growing and learning experience. I met interesting people from all over the country, and to them I was Muriel, ME-not just Dave’s wife or Glenda’s or Robert’s mother. I learned that I could function very well as an individual. It was a heady feeling.. . . I’m a much different person than when I started riding less than two years ago. My confidence and self-esteem have grown. I’m a more independent and, therefore, a happier person.. . . I don’t know which direction life will take me.. . . But one thing is sure. As long as I travel down the path of life on a motorcycle, it’s bound to be an exciting trip!

Housewifery, as a traditional social relation, has lost meaning and commitment for this woman (and for valid social reasons), andit is through a cultural commodity that she discovers new experiences and a new social identity. Social discontent and emancipation is thus integrated into the concrete immediacy of consumerism.

The foregoing mass-mediated accounts of the motorcycle experience ride the wave of a national boom in motorcycle sales and they reflect and impute meaning to this leisure activity. Such writers articulate the inchoate experiences of millions of cyclists and, in turn, provide an idiom for prospective motorcyclists, informing them of the sensuous and conceptual experiences which the motorcycle can provide. Given the lack of a satisfying work and urban culture, these writers furnish images of personal freedom and individuation through a particular product of industrial society. Both existing and future cyclists can find the meaning and

136 J o u r n a l of Popular Cul ture justification of the connection between their search for cultural meaning on the one hand and the symbolization of the motorcycle on the other. Their writings articulate contemporary American’s longing for a better and vital way of life and demonstrate how this longing can be gratified through a particular cultural commodity. Drawing upon the motorcyle’s own cultural traditions, these writers are part of the cultural production of the motorcycle’s mythical image.

The Mass Consumption of Motorcycling: The cultural character of the motorcycle, once a n artifact of deviant

sub-cultures, has become a key to and symbol of contemporary self- expression for millions of ordinary people. The motorcycle has become an object of mass consumption, aggressively marketed by competitive motorcycle industries. This was socially possible, in large part, because the motorcycle’s cultural traditions meshed with the anomization of suburban, middle class culture beginning in the 1960s and the recent outdoor, physically active, and urban-escapist impulses and trends characteristic of leisure over the last fifteen years. As impulses for extraordinary sensory experience, solitude, unspoiled aesthetic experiences, personal control, adventure, and sociability increased in this period, these tendencies soon became mediated through the products and services of a burgeoning outdoor recreation industry. While the needs for a n extraordinary leisure experience originate within social individuals, the concrete representation and mode of this experience becomes mediated through cultural commodites. Most popular forms of outdoor recreation are associated with particular commodity forms-camping, boating, snow skiing, flying, tennis, motocycling, touring and hiking, leisure towns, et al. It is the commodity which largely conveys the symbolic terms of particular outdoor experience.

This consumerized outdoor trend signifies a new era in popular American leisure. The immediate post-war era of the 1940s and 50s was a time of settling down in new suburban homes and the enjoyment of the paraphenalia of suburban consumerism: the house, workshop, autombile, and media. Suburban consumerism spelled the deterioration or absence of a compelling culture around work and traditional social relations. The family, intertwined around suburban commodites, was a new post-war source of meaning and satisfaction. The contemporary outdoor and sensory-stimulating trend in leisure spells an increasing dissatisfaction with the home and the media, as well as with urban culture in general, as satisfying leisure sources. This dissatisfaction, along with the ongoing physically-dulling and mental tensions of modern work and urban routines, is the social infrastructure for needs and aspirations for new experiences and meanings. Business Week accurately termed this new leisure trend as the search for a “second life’’ on weekends and vacations away from mindless and nerve-wracking work, contemporary social problems, and a stereotyped social environment.22 I t is against, or in relation to, this anomic social background that we can ferret out the coming together of a search for new experience and meaning through the cultural symbols of the

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motorcycle. In the foregoing social milieu, and against the backdrop of the

motorcycle’s own popular traditions, the motorcycle became a n object which could be marketed on a mass scale for ordinary Americans other than deviants and hipsters. The motorcycling image of the 1950s and 60s- abandonment, wild freedom, transcendence-were co-opted as themes with which to mass market this modern chariot in the 70s. Honda, more than any other company, played a n instrumental role in channeling the image of the motorcycle away from the hipster to the factory worker and office employee. In its advertisements and in its showrooms, Honda communicated a sporting machine image through which “respectable” people could also flaunt the establishment and find personal affirmation.

But while it associated itself with respectability (“You Meet the Nicest People on Hondas”), Honda made no effort to conceal the traditional forbidden and freedom image of the motorcycle. Honda was successful in the mass marketing of the motorcycle because of its intensive promotional and advertising campaignsF3 and because the motorcycle’s cultural image, cast in earlier decades, appealed to the emerging active, sensory, and escapist impulses of youth and workers (particularly, but no exclusively, younger workers). The motorcycle continued to communicate an experience of self-expression and freedom, and the successful marketing and sales manipulation of this image accounted for the great boom in motorcycle sales in the late 1960s and early 7 0 ~ 2 ~

A cogent example of the new corporate image of the motorcycle is a recent two-page ad in Newsweek in which the AMF Corporation (a leading leisure goods conglomerate) conducted a n interview with Malcolm Forbes (editor-in-chief of Forbes, and president of Forbes, I ~ C . ) . ~ ~ The captioned interview statements ran alongside a full-page photograph of Forbes (who is an older man) perched cheerfully astride his new Harley-Davidson motorcycle (owned by AMF). Forbes’ statements were a n implicit advertisement for Harley-Davidsons and more explicitly for the use of recreational goods for an active recreational side of life. Asked why recreation was necessary, Forbes replied: “It’s a form of therapy. Few people can keep at the same thing day in and day out. You need a mental and physical change. Recreation is not only enjoyable, it’s essential.” Asked if passive relaxation wasn’t sufficient, Forbes replied: “NO. The mind never rests. You need to occupy it with something new or it will go on thinking about the job. Play tennis. Golf. Ride a motorcycle. Something with interest. Something competitive. It’ll help your work.” These statements are surely complementary to those of Gutkind, Perry, or Streano.

At the bottom of the second page in small print was the note: “This is one in a series of messages brought to you by AMF.” This was followed with a list of AMF recreational products, and in the corner of the page was a caption which read: “AMF-We Make the Weekends.” The function of the culture industries could not be put more blatantly or accurately. The imagery of the ad reflected the changes in American society since the Second World War. Gone was the image of the hood and the hipster on the

138 Journa l of Popular Culture Harley motorcycle. Nowadays even Malcolm Forbes rides a Harley on the weekends. The dullness and pressure of work and urban functions created the need for an active form of recreation which was compensatory and which allowed one to reproduce labor. Work has no intrinsic meaning; one derives meaning in life from the objects which work’s income can purchase; and it is in this social context that AMF’s products fill an important function-through their products they help you to make your weekend, the time that you live. The products consume the consumer-they dictate the form and symbolic terms of a leisure experience.

The social dynamic involved in successful mass consumption is a dovetailing relationship between social needs of a generalized (and largely ambiguous) nature and their expression through particular cultural commodites. While the culture industry largely determines what commodities are appropriate for people’s social needs, they do not necessarily create the social needs themselves. The brilliant success of the corporate sales effort is that marketing specialists first uncover what existing needs and wants are and program specific commodities for their satisfaction. As one corporate journal put this: the goal or ultimate aim of “marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service “fits” his needs and sells itself.”26 Market researchers analyze cultural tendencies, uncover the inchoate or articulated needs, as well as social troubles and issues, and design specific commodities for the comfort, convenience, enjoyment, and amelioration of these tendencies. With the entire social environment geared around consumerism, it is easy for ambiguous social needs and troubles to be translated into differentiated wants for particular commodities.

The American popular culture of motorcycling was easily co-optable by an aggressive and expansive motorcycle industry desirous of cashing in on new cultural tendencies for extraordinary sensory experiences, personal meaning and fulfilment, and anti-industrial and-urban aesthetic experiences. The result was the mass production of a popular culture tradition; the motorcycle as a medium of escape, rebellion, and adventure. As a cultural commodity, therefore, the motorcycle has successfully communicated a potential experience which matches ambiguous social needs. The commodity is always something other than the thing itself: it is buried under, and inseparable from, cultural representation. Certain cultural experiences thus become identical to the material or commercial means of their existence. For those seeking such an experience, a cultural model has been defined and communicated by popular traditions, reinforced by media representations, and solidified by the aggressive sales campaigns of the culture industries.

If meaningful cultural experiences are absent in the work-place, in politics, and in many everyday life routines, individuals are able to constitute themselves as intentional and meaninpful actors through cultural commodities. In some part, consumers do achieve an experience of freedom, innovation, and social identity with the use of specific cultural commodities. In part, this is so because their expectations have probably been shaped by the symbolic images communicated by the commodity-

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they are already socialized, so to speak. Moreover, the social and cultural significance of cultural commodities is that they allow a relatively wide margin for personal innovation within the symbolic framework of the activity defined by the commodity. Any society, including American capitalism, requires this element of social and cultural integration in order to survive, and this goes a long way in explaining the political stability of capitalism as well as the obsolesence of class as a n agency of social change. Consumers of cultural commodites are able to sustain a minimal amount of freedom and autonomy in order to remain social beings, in a society with a democratic tradition, and with dignity other than that of mere wageslaves and impotent voters.

Yet the obvious observation that consumerism involves some symbolic pay-off does not contradict the reification problematic of the commodity form. A distortion or inversion occurs whereby the culture or symbolic experiences communicated by the commodity are interpreted literally as factualized things inherent to the object (and not the social activity of the producer or consumer). As Barthes has argued, commodities assume mythical form by the appearance that the cultural experience symbolized by the commodity is inherent to the ~ o m m o d i t y . ~ ~ The social reality wherein individuals are seeking, creating, and expressing culture is thereby obliterated by the literal perception of the commodity as culture. Put another way, both individuals and objects lose their social and historical qualities: individuals lose the sense that they create culture and make history, and objects lose the meaning that they were created by producers. Social intentions, actions, and experiences are perceived as a function of the nature of things. Herein lies one of the chief control mechanisms of mass consumption: cultural commodites depoliticize everyday life and speech by distorting the social reality of man as producer and creator. People become the passive recipients of cultural experiences mediated through the factually-perceived symbols of a commodity.

The mystifying character of cultural commodites, however, are not the same as that of traditional ideologies. If ideologies are defined, following Gouldner, as rational forms of discourse undertaken by groups in public places, and which seek to reconstruct or transcend ordinary behavior and language around some value or ideal, then the culturally-mystifying character of consumerism undermines the activating rationality of ideology, thus depoliticizing the culture of everyday life.28 Ideology as an extraordinary form of discourse and social knowledge (which posits the actor as creator) is no longer accessible as a mediation for social and political change or for cultural innovation. Consumerism as social practice is non-ideological. It entraps individuals in the immediacies of their articulated wants as largely shaped by the cultural facts of the commodity.

Thus, modem corporate society stabilizes itself less on the diffusion of an ideology than by a consumer-oriented way of life which promises meaning, enjoyment, and sensory pleasure. Legitimation is tied to the material performance of the economic-political system, through the cultural promises of commodites and not by rational belief systems. The value rhetoric or idiom of traditional ideologies-freedom, equality, and

140 Journal of Popular Culture individuality-are attached to the factual symbols of cultural commodites, both in advertising, media, and in popular perceptions and practice. This reification of ideology and ideals-their attachment to commodites- reduces social knowledge to the hereand-now facts of consumer prices and sensory experiences. The result is a loss of any coherent ideological awareness of the political and economic contexts of individual action. Moreover, questions regarding social domination and social imbalance, which result from industrial and technological priorities, are obscured. This factualization of social values and cultural experiences is the essence of consumer reification and an important key to its chief social control function-that of cultural depoliticization.

Notes ‘For another interpretation of motorcycling, cf. Thomas W. Martin and Kenneth J. Berry,

“Competitive Sport in Post-Industrial Society: The Case of the Motorcross Racer,” Journal of Popular Culture, 8:l (Summer, 1974), 107-120.

*This view is cogently argued by Joffre Dumazedier, Toward a Society of Leisure (New York: Free Press, 1967); and Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York Schocken, 1976).

3For two very excellent theoretical interpretations of the interplay between culture and consumption, cf. Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness (New York McGraw-Hill, 1976); and William Leiss, The Limits to Satisfaction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976). This paper is indebted to many of their insights.

This was bluntly stated by an editorial in Forbes (January 1,1969), p. 174): “Leisure.. .has created a big opportunity for business; not for nothing are shrewd companies rushing to create ‘leisure-time activities’ divisions, moving across traditional boundaries, from electronics into publishing, from publishing into motion pictures, and so on.. . . If Americans want to structure their leisure time, why not sell them the things to structure it with: riding lawnmowers; tape- recorders; home education courses; books; records; sailboats and other articles yet to be invented.”

These are bold generalizations, but they are largely supported by sociological theory and research. For some documentation, see my “Beyond Class: The Decline of Industrial Labor and Leisure,” Telos 28 (Summer, 1976), 5580; and the references cited in notes 1, 2, and 3 above.

6For aspects ofthemotorcycle’scultural history, from which I draw here, see Thierry Sagnier, Bike! (New York: Harper and Row, 1974); and Lee Gutkind, Bike Fever (New York Avon, 1973).

7 1 use the term “mythical” to refer to the process whereby the values and symbolic experiences communicated by commodites tend to be interpreted as factualized things inherent to the commodity and not social individuals. On this theory of cultural reification, see Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972). I will return to this cultural problematic later in the paper.

BSee Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels (New York: Random, 1966) on this rebellious confrontation.

9For an excellent analysis of Easy Rider, See Diana Trilling, “Easy Rider and its Critics,” Mass Culture Revisited, ed. Bernard Rosenberg and David M. White (New York: Van Nostrand, 1971). pp. 235244.

‘ O I t is difficult to weigh the relative importance and influence of Nms, television programs, books, magazines, and advertisements in shaping the cultural image of the motorcycle. While films and books devoted to motorcycling are the only media discussed here, magazines in particular, in my estimation and experience, are important sources for the cultural meaning of the motorcycle. There are currently fifteen monthly motorcycle magazines sold on the newsstand with some of them having subscription rates well up into the hundreds of thousands (particularly Cycle and Cycle World-the most popular). The delight of the motorcycle-the excitement and challenge of a motorcross run, the self-transcending spirituality of long-distance touring, the exhilaration and speed of weekend cafe racing, and so on-are reproduced as a colorful spectacle

Popular Culture and Mass Consumption 141 of freedom and individuality in these magazines. As an integral part of the production of the motorcycle’s culture, the magazines affirm the myth that anybody who rides a cycle can experience the drama and thrills of the spectacle.

“Robin Perry, The Road Rider (New York Crown, 1974), pp. 2-3. 1zBike Feuer, op. cit.. p. 16 and 252. ‘Rlbid., p. 252. 141bid., p. 79, 15Zbid., p. 16, 18, and 57. 1Wince Streano, Touching America With Two Wheels 9New York Random, 1974), p. 6. I7Bike!, op. cit., p. 31. 18Gutkind, Bike Fever, OP. cit., P. 204. l9Ibid., pp. 111-112. Z(’*‘. . .more than a few riders presently stride their machines in order to pull up failing

machismo and low DoDularitv auotients. In this respect. and many others, the multimillion-dollar . - _ _ advertising campaigns have paid off. Motorcylces have been put roughly on the same level as underarm deodorants and do-it-yourself daily aikido courses. Own one and you’re a man, regardless of your ability to ride it.. . . Speed and power have been equated with strength and manliness.. . . The nature and form of the advertisements now displayed prominently are not accidental. Rather, they’re calculated, well-planned, and superbly executed maneuvers exploiting man’s greatest insecurities-weakness and impotence.” Sagnier, Bike!, op. cit., pp. 28- 29.

21 “Identity Rediscovered,” Rider, 2:l (Summer, 1975), pp. 26-27. ‘2“The Double Life Pays Off,” Business Week, July 10, 1965, p. 24. 23“Honda’s American success was attributable almost totally to their successful advertising

campaign, possibly one of the most successful ever launched in the United States.. . . it strove to dismiss the idea that all riders were hoods and simultaneously implied that you, the buyer, just couldn’t be one of those despicable few who tainted the good name of all innocent motorcyclists.” Sagnier, Bike!, op. cit., p. 16.

24111 1940 there were 136,000 registered motorcycles in America. by 1950 registration creeped up to 454,000, by 1960 a little more to 570,000, and by 1970 it had shot up to 2,824,000. In three years, the 1970 figure almost doubled to 4,222,000 motorcycles sold in 1973. US. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States; 1974. (95th edition, Washington, D.C., 1974), p. 556. These figures do not include off-road motorcycles which do not have to be registered; this would add at least a couple million to the 1973 figures.

Weptember, 1976, issues of Newsweek. 26“Marketing: Recognizing People’s Wants and Needs,” Industry Week, 186: 2 (July 14,1975),

p. 39. The unsigned article goes on to persuasively argue and warn businesses that success in the modem market is predicated on effective marketing rather than sales: on designing and marketing goods and services which fit existing needs rather than on those which try to create new needs. Citing examples, such as the Ford’s Edsel, they show how a complete reliance on creating new wants and sales manipulation (i.e., advertising) can lead to failure and bankruptcy.

2’Mythologies, op. cit.. pp. 107-157. Another cogent statement on this cultural problematic is Stanley Aronowitz, “Mass Culture and the Eclipse of bason,” College EngZish, 388 (April 1977), 768-774.

28For Alving Gouldner’s discussion of the relationship between ideology and consumerism, from which I draw here, see TheDialecticof Ideologyand Technology(New York Seabury, 1977), cha. 7.11 and 12.

Professor Alt teaches sociology at the State University of New York College at Cortland, Cortland, NY 13045.